Hauling vs Hoarding

To make a final point on my precious post. Again, I don't think we should make those people who got lucky and purchased a good haul from Black Friday feel like they did something wrong or accuse them for being selfish hoarders or whatever. Sure there prolly are some who buys as much to re-sell em for a marked up price but I would like to think that is a small minority group in this community. I would like to imagine those that did get a nice haul got them to enjoy and share with others on this site and friends and not to just hoard in their closest for years and years. As long as they played by the rules, let them buy whatever they want. Never know if one of those people will be sharing a bottle with u at your next bottle share or might throw it in as an extra in a trade for u.

 

There is another aspect here, and that is the seeming sense of entitlement. If I (not me personally because I could not care less) don't buy it all, someone who "doesn't deserve it" will. To me that is just totally fucking ridiculous. And people who don't run the gauntlet to score these beers are somehow failures or lazy? Yeah - if you wanted the stuff and didn't work for it that may be true and those people shouldn't be complaining. If someone wanted it and couldn't jump through the hoops of fire and simply missed out, maybe can bitch a little bit, but it is a limited release so obstacles are part of the price to be paid (limited supply and distribution, bottle limits, tickets, etc - that's the facts, Jack). Someone who wanted the stuff, did the legwork, tried really hard and got screwed because somebody brought a dozen non-beer drinking friends to buy for them - yeah, I think that is a legitimate cause for complaining.

I don't have a dog in this hunt either - I don't care that much about any beer. If somebody made a great purchase of "everything they could grab", good on ya. It's the behaviors and attitudes that seem somewhat out of whack, but not surprising. After all, everything really is about "me".

 

No. The outrage over hoarding is entirely about supply. Someone buying less does not affect me, except to leave more beer for others. Someone driving too slowly congests traffic and can actually be dangerous.

 

I always try and make this point(s), but have never been able to do it so eloquently - thank you

 

I think it was a couple years ago - somebody posted a picture of cases of Black Note they had scored and said they were essentially just going t sit there and look at it because they were "afraid to drink it" - I remember that part prety clearly because it was a WTF moment for me. That's even worse... People can buy what they want for whatever reason they want - just don't have to make everybody else feel inferior. Great - someone "scored" and wants to crow a little - I get it. Doesn't mean anybody else isn't up to snuff.

 

Honestly sometimes I see people who buy so much that I don't even know what they do with it all.

 

Yes, this is a better analogy than driving. Except that tickets to a single game cannot be saved for future use.

Actually, now that I think about it the perfect analogy is related to driving but is actually about fuel consumption. I have the same reaction to people buying $800 worth of Bourbon County as I do to someone that drives a hummer -- it's excessive. Except a hummer actually has some reasonable uses (e.g. off-roading).

 

Surviving the zombie apocalypse...sorry for off topic, but this thread could use a little levity in my opinion

 

The idea of time value and the difference between someone "working" to get a beer and someone being lazy and showing up just whenever came up in another thread. Related to BCBS, as it happens. I said something similar there.

The problem with your scenario (the person being out of luck because they didn't put in the time/effort) is that it presumes that if you work hard to get a beer, you will get the beer. It ignores the fact that the difference in the effort expended by guy #20 and guy #25 is often negligible, but that guy #20 may end up with infinitely more of the rare beer than guy #25 if the supply runs out at #24. To have the "fuck guy #25--he should have tried harder!" attitude strikes me as startlingly tone deaf to the reality of the situation--that with super limited releases, sometimes the so-called "hard workers" get shut out too. While it's consistent of you to say that you wouldn't be upset if you were guy #25, even if guys #21, #22, #23 and #24 were all indifferent to craft beer and just there because guy #20 needs some trade bait or beers to sell at a profit, I still think a better end game is for guy #20 to think about the people behind him. Not work to make sure the people behind him also get the beer, but just think about them.

And this is where it gets tricky, because "think about so and so", isn't a rule. It's not a guideline. There isn't an exact formula for what is or isn't okay. At a certain level, each individual has to decide for themselves what is or isn't appropriate. Selfishness is a spectrum, and I'd hazard a guess that zero people can lay claim to doing nothing selfish (on some level) when it comes to beer. Case in point: there is a certain beer that I will spend time and effort to acquire multiple bottles of because it is one of my favorite beers ever--but wait: I don't say that to rationalize my behavior. I understand that is fundamentally a selfish motivation. As a result, I try to do what I can in other areas of beering to make up for my selfishness with that particular beer. Sometimes I will just give away beer to friends of mine because I think they will like it, expecting nothing in return. On multiple occasions, I've hosted a "bottle share" where I bring all of the beer for us to drink (so not really a "share" per se) while we hang out, also because I think they will enjoy the beer. Sometimes I'll sell one of my beers to someone that missed out--not an extra that I hauled or stocked up on, but a beer that I bought for myself to drink, but decided I could go without so this other person could enjoy it. And usually, that only happens when the person in question doesn't feel right taking a beer for free; they insist on paying me for it.

But I digress. For me, it's just a matter of keeping other beer lovers in mind with regards to your purchase behavior. Does that mean you need to be the Mother Teresa of beering? I personally don't think so. To me, it's a matter of doing more good than "evil".

But I thought beer was for respecting?

What!? Only one 4-pack each of coffee and bw and no vanilla?!? Fucking pauper.

 

Just as a matter of language, I have to agree with this (with a slight change). Hoarding means you are taking an excessive amount of something out of circulation. If you are turning around and reselling, you are not hoarding, your are functioning as a broker, taking an underpriced asset and reselling at a more market efficient price. We can think that is good, bad or be indifferent to it, but it is not hoarding. I do think it is still hoarding if the intent for resale is to only resell very slowly over time having increased the price even more through artifical scarcity by collecting up a large amount of an already scarce asset and not reselling it freely into the market.

Well, market forces are going to impact things whether we have a free market or a regulated market. If you think about it all of the shenanigans everyone is complaining about exist because the price is set artificially low and the amount one can purchase is artifically limited. If it were otherwise, the initial price would be much higher and only those who thought it was worth the high price would buy.

Now, anyone can try to get it by spending the time and energy and many do to keep for themselves, but that leaves out people who would have paid more but were unable or unwilling to go to the hassle of getting it. A subset of them would have paid a lot more, so a resale market develops to take advantage of the now even more restricted market (that is, supply has constricted more than demand, since it came out below the otherwise market price). The prices skyrocket. That invites unscrupulous profiteers, makng it worth it to get mules, change clothes in the parking lot, etc. I suppose this approach probably works best towards the utilitarian ends the brewers and many consumers want (everyone has a chance and at least initially it is not priced like a luxury item), but it does cause some of the egregious behavior as an unfortunate byproduct.

While I think I tend to agree with you, I'm not sure it's that clear cut. What if there were 2 bottles and one person behind you? Or 100 bottles and 99 people behind you? Either way, your taking more than one is going to deprive others. Where is the point that you owe some sort of "nice guy" duty to others behind you in line where you had no such limitation before? If there were no line because no one knew the store was getting any, is it okay to buy the only case they have, or should you only buy one bottle?

 

I'm all for analogies, but holding down two jobs is not the same as buying 2 x your allotment of a limited release by circumventing local limits.

And personally it's hard for me to differentiate between the evil ebay seller, the person that just "loves this beer so much" and the beer Jesus who redistributes the wealth as he/she sees fit (via trading/gifting/selling for cost) - they're all just different sorts of wrong

 

There is nothing wrong with liking a beer enough to buy a lot for yourself to drink. And there sure isn't anything wrong with sharing with other people who either couldn't get it or haven't tried it.

 

Liking - sure, but as you clean out the store / circumvent limits, bear in mind that there's probably lots of people that really like it too, that won't be having any due to your actions.

Sharing - having a single bottle and sharing it is a cool thing to do. Buying extra bottles for the purpose of sharing isn't quite so altruistic.

 

I think hauling is about people wanting to control the rare beer supply. If they can get more than the allotted amount then they can trade/share/hoard however they please. I got one Prop '13 from a trading partner and waited until every beer knurd (my family) could get together and taste it. It blew everyone away and even my Mom asked how to get more. That was it, I won't be getting anymore because it isn't worth the time and money right now. Having multiples of a rare beer also gives them options. It's almost like people want to be their own distributors to control who gets what.

 

I voted no limit as long as not re-selling (this assumes obeying whatever rules have been set up by the seller). I also have to admit that I'm more or less in agreement with one of the less popular posters on this thread, @mrpeterandthepuffers. He seems to be an unapologetic realist in a sea of idealists. He plays by the rules and puts in the effort for something that he wants. I haven't found anything in his posts that strikes me as unreasonable. What's that old saying? Hate the game, not the player. Personally, I hate the game and mostly elect not to participate.

 

No offense, but that is a bad analogy. Most people who work multiple jobs don't do it by choice and would be happy to work one if it paid enough for them to get by. Similarly, most people would be happy if they could just go to one store and get their fill. Again, I'm not too concerned if people want to go around scooping everything up, but to pretend that doing anything with it other than reselling is somehow being altruistic is just being obtuse.

Edit: for clarification, I just don't see why the reselling is being demonized when it's really not too different from trading. While you are sending it to someone who could not get it, you're still benefiting from the trade and if you do go around cleaning places out, you've taken that opportunity from a local for your benefit.

 

Looks like we agree:

 

Can't be a game without players.